Tag Archives: Product Review

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A Fun Travel Card Game and New Music from Putumayo Kids

icandothat-cardgame

Looking for a fun in-the-car or waiting-to-board game to have in your bag to keep your kids amused on your next journey? Check out this fun game from I Can Do That! games.

The 51 1/2 glossy cards look like they’re ready for beach, mountain and a juice-spilling or two! Not to mention that the photos of fun and interesting places to visit in the U.S. and worldwide will whet your kid’s appetite for travel. And, since each card also has three questions (Strange But True, Back In The Day and Who Knows?) about each location, I’m sure the whole family will learn something new.

putamayo-european-playground

While we played the game above for the first time, we listened to this new CD from Putumayo Kids. It’s another fun round-up of children’s songs from around the world – this time, from Europe.

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Flips Are Fantastic

flip

We took our Flip Mino for a test-drive on our recent trip to Whistler, so today for Photo Friday I’m going to showcase some video clips which we took on that trip instead of still photos – just for fun.

Setting up the Flip is incredibly easy. Literally, you take it out of the box, connect it to your PC and once charged, it just works. It’s also tiny, a truly pocket-sized device. The geek in me loves the fact that there are no memory cards or other storage media to fiddle with. This is truly a well-designed product. Taking videos is just a snap, so easy in fact, that I was able to record this short clip while snowboarding along-side CAM.

And here’s one the WanderDad took of BigB and me coming in towards the Catskinner chair on Blackcomb.

I have two small criticisms of the Flip Mino: firstly, 2x digital zoom isn’t quite enough for filming your children tearing down mountains. They become indistinguishable dots on the horizon very quickly. The range of the zoom is only about 30 feet which is OK, but not great. Secondly, within moments of downloading my video clips to my PC, I found myself hunting around online for video editing software. The application supplied with the Flip is very good at helping a novice user navigate through downloading and copying videos from the device to the PC, but does very little else.

Wander on over to DeliciousBaby for some more Photo Friday fun. And if you’re so inclined, Amazon.com has a great selection of Flip camcorders.

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professor-toto-italian

learning a language with professor toto

professor-toto-italian

I’m excited to be hosting another giveaway! And even more excited that it’s part of Twitter Social – GNO, a TwitterMoms event. You can find out more about this fun online social event at GoodAndCrazyPeople or MommyGossip – these bloggers are the twittermom hosts.

Even though it’s a social event, GNO organizers do pick a theme topic for discussions. This week, the topic is Family Travel. I’ll be logging on to twitter, 6pm-late (PST) to chatter and answer any questions I can and generally own the soapbox on this, my favorite topic of conversation.

I decided that being a Guest Host for such an event was worth celebrating. Hence this giveaway. I have 7 Professor Toto Sing & Learn Starter Kits to give away: two each in Italian, French and German and one in Spanish. You’ll be amazed at how quickly your child starts to pick up vocabulary in another language through learning songs and rhymes with Professor Toto and his friends.

What
In this Professor Toto Starter Kit, children learn by listening to a CD and singing along to vocabulary-building songs, Paging through a glossy, full-color book with pictures of words they hear on the CD, and Coloring pictures of words they hear on the CD. Each kit contains:

1 Sing & Learn CD – 26 minutes. 15 Professor Toto vocabulary-building songs. 1 Sing & Learn Activity Book (24p Full Color). Each song is illustrated and translated. 1 Color & Learn Coloring Book (24p). Children color the words they’re hearing, so they visually reinforce their new vocabulary. 1 Professor Toto’s A+ Kids Club Certificate. Professor Toto’s at-home students fill in their names and hang their Professor Toto certificate on the wall. (7-3/8′ x 9/14″) 1 Full-Color Learning Guide.

How
Leave a comment below with saying why you feel learning another language is important for your child. Don’t forget to leave your email address so I have a way of contacting you.

Winners
UPDATE: I’ll choose a winner randomly and announce the results during the Twitter Social – GNO, at 8pm and 9pm (PST) or thereabouts. GNO gets a little crazy with up to 200 moms tweeting at the same time, so 9pm is a goal. (I’ll use email as my backup method to contact winners – see above).

8pm drawing winners
French: BethComingUp
Italian: 3_diva_girls
German: Jaime
Spanish: Amy

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Trayblecloth

how to avoid crawling under airplane seats…

…to pick up your child’s crayons/markers/pencils.

Trayblecloth

The TRAYblecloth from the folks over at Love To Travel Products is a must-have for any mom juggling children, bags, snacks and toys on a flight. This is a product which your child will use from toddlerhood all the way through to middle school.

The clear vinyl surface can be used as a dry-erase board with or without the reusable activity sheets which are also included. The front pockets can be used for small items: markers, headphones, ipod, hand-held video games and the teeny-weeny games which come with them (which trust me, are impossible to find on the floor beneath a dimly-lit coach class seat).

I’ve got a red Trayblecoth to give away. Post your strangest, messiest or funniest airplane-with-kids story as a comment below and I’ll include you in a drawing to win your very own TRAYblecloth. Deadline is September 30th.

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A travel accessory every Mom should have…

The KIVA Keychain backpack.
My older son is a packrat and a cool stuff, gadget geek. He found this in a local store and just loved the fact that a backpack-sized bag folded up so small.
I paid this particular purchase no attention until I was packing for our trip to Italy. Since we were backpacking, it seemed that it would be useful as a daypack.
Well, was that an understatement. We used it every day. For general daypack use (wallets, keys, camera, etc), for groceries, for loaning to my sister-in-law who had forgotten to bring a daypack and wanted to take her kids to Pisa for the day. General all-purpose, fit-in-your-pocket, glad-I-brought-it workhorse of a little bag.
The bag doesn’t have any padding on the straps and is very light, so I wouldn’t want to try to overfill it.
Especially useful for backpackers who need something a little smaller and lighter to use as a daypack.
Available at a long list of online retailers. Or check out the KIVA website to find a physical store nearest you.

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